I asked you a simple question! Do you love her? YES! But don't hold that against me, I'm a little screwy myself!

Thursday, June 30, 2005

A Day in the Life

This is what Sam and I do at work. We are nothing if not productive and serious.

snovellasimpson: I just read the file of a man who came and gave a guest lecture.
snovellasimpson: Of course, he graduated, like, last year.
seliseburns: What did it say?
snovellasimpson: One of his recommenders calls him a "great citizen"
seliseburns: Man, I need to get me a recommender like that.
snovellasimpson: And he wrote a series of stories about "the rootlessness of single life and the half-life of a failed marriage." Cheery.
seliseburns: Heh.
snovellasimpson: I think I should try to write a happy literary story.
snovellasimpson: And be a better citizen.
seliseburns: Of course you should. There aren't enough fluffy bunny stories.
snovellasimpson: I don't think I like your tone.
seliseburns: What tone?
snovellasimpson: I can smell the sarcasm from miles away.
seliseburns: Oh. That tone. I thought you meant a musical tone.
snovellasimpson: There it is again! I think you're the one who's not a good citizen, let alone a great one!
seliseburns: You're right. I'm totally going the other route. Catwoman, that's me. Purrrr-fectly rotten citizen.
snovellasimpson: Yeah, I mean--the clothes alone.
snovellasimpson: Don't you wish Birds of Prey was still on the air?seliseburns: Not really. I never watched it.
snovellasimpson: Neither did I. But I wish it was here.
seliseburns: Because...you need more WB shows?
snovellasimpson: I see your point.
seliseburns: Well, it wasn't so much a point as an inquiry. But I'll take it.
snovellasimpson: It just seemed like such a good year.
seliseburns: What year?
snovellasimpson: I meant idea.
snovellasimpson: I think I got my conversations mixed up.
snovellasimpson: I'm not crazy.
snovellasimpson: Birds of Prey seemed like a good IDEA.
seliseburns: Are you talking to someone else too?
snovellasimpson: I was talking to someone on the phone. "What year is that student entering?" or some such nonsense?
seliseburns: Okay. I'll stop being confused now.
snovellasimpson: No, you can be confused as much as you want. I'll stop being a dingbat.
seliseburns: What were we talking about?
snovellasimpson: Before Birds of Prey? And before the file I read about the greatest citizen and writer? We were talking about parents and presents.
seliseburns: Maybe we should just move forward, rather than back.
snovellasimpson: You'd make a great talk show host.
snovellasimpson: Can you believe I'm missing Maury right now?
seliseburns: S'good for you. Suck it up.
snovellasimpson: But what if Raheem is the baby daddy?
seliseburns: It's best that you do not know.
seliseburns: Just like it'd be best if that kid had been born to better parents who wouldn't go on Maury.
snovellasimpson: How embarrassing! Can you imagine what it would be like to have Maury tell you who your father is?
seliseburns: No. And can you imagine having a tape of Maury included in your baby pictures?
snovellasimpson: Ew. You know, he could be doing a makeover episode, or one with drag queens.
snovellasimpson: Either way, I'm missing it.
seliseburns: And you're better for it.
snovellasimpson: I'll tell you what I am--sleepy.
snovellasimpson
: Erika called last night, so I didn't get to bed until nearly 1:30.
seliseburns: Me either. But I was just clandestinely watching Lois and Clark. Cause that's what I do.
snovellasimpson: Tell the truth. How many episodes did you watch?
seliseburns: I'm on the 3rd episode on the 3rd disk.
snovellasimpson: And you got it on Sunday? I fear you.
seliseburns: I just consume them fast. Plus, watching Lois and Clark is like reading an old book I love. It's comforting and easy.
snovellasimpson: Well, I'm glad you're not having the reaction I sometimes have to old shows I used to like. Like Family Matters? I loved that show so much, and now it's painful to behold.
seliseburns: Well, it is painful at points. But mostly, just comforting.
snovellasimpson: And Dean Cain used to be hot.
seliseburns: Yeah. Before he let himself grow facial hair, thus alienating his fan base.
snovellasimpson: And then he played that guy, the murderer, Scott Peterson. Why? Why, Dean Cain?
seliseburns: I do not know.
snovellasimpson: I need to wake up. That carpet ain't gonna clean itself tonight.
seliseburns: But wouldn't it be cool if it did?
snovellasimpson: Well--yeah--but it doesn't.
seliseburns: Have you tried?
snovellasimpson: Well, there are some mystery light switches on the walls.
seliseburns: Yep. I bet you just haven't figured out which one is the "Self-Cleaning Carpet" button.
snovellasimpson: That button could save me a bunch of trouble. I can finally watch that Marx brothers movie.
snovellasimpson: Or I could if I can find the right switch.
seliseburns: There you go. Way to defeat that defeatist thinking.
snovellasimpson: Or I could take a nap.
seliseburns: Can I have one too?
snovellasimpson: If you get home in time.
seliseburns: I probably won't. Stupid 7 o'clock.
snovellasimpson: Stupid trip to the store for carpet cleaner.
seliseburns: I'd probably end up watching Lois and Clark anyway.
snovellasimpson: You know, you don't have to watch.
seliseburns: Well, I kind of want to. Plus, I want you to be able to.
snovellasimpson: You're a good person.
seliseburns: Thanks.
seliseburns: You are too, you know.
snovellasimpson: Thank you.
snovellasimpson: Although I did just now crawl on the floor to try to figure out why the speakers aren't working.
seliseburns: Heh. That's important stuff, right there.
snovellasimpson: And I didn't figure it out.
seliseburns: I have faith that you will.
snovellasimpson: Oh, yay! It's back!
snovellasimpson: That was close. I need to listen to the 90s station.
seliseburns: Of course. Oh, did you know that Pride and Prejudice, the Colin Firth version, aired in 1995?
snovellasimpson: Smashing Pumpkins rock on!
snovellasimpson: No, I didn't know that.
snovellasimpson: Best year ever

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Hard At Work

They pay me the big bucks for this.


What Type of Villain are You?
mutedfaith.com.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Book Quiz for Pirates

Want, take, have. That's how I roll--especially when it comes to book quizzes. I yoinked the first four questions from some place, and I had Stephanie pose a few more essential book questions for me. That, too, is how I roll.

1. Total number of books I've owned

There are 248 borrowed, bought, stolen, found, and gifted books in my Greensboro apartment. This number does not include the Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon mangas; the Buffy graphic novel; or the Harlequin and Silhouette romance novels stacked in the closet.

I've lost dozens of books. I remember a hardcover, illustrated edition of Pinocchio that I read over and over again because I liked the part when the puppet-boy accidently burned off his feet. It's gone. I remember my illustrated children's Bible, which contained an image of Mary--sweat-drenched and weary--cradling her newborn son. Joseph's single candle illuminates the scene. That's gone, too, along with a worn copy of a Nancy Friday collection of sex stories, three copies of that Richard Rodriguez autobiography, and Anne of Green Gables--to name a few.

I sold the Chicago Manual of Style for gas money.

2. Last book I bought

Yesterday, I purchased Girl with a Pearl Earring and Possession from a seller on Amazon.com. The shipping cost more than the actual texts.

I bought them both because I've seen the movies. Stephanie advocates seeing the movie first; that way, you can almost guarantee you won't be disappointed. (The exception? The Godfather. Mario Puzo? Shut up.)


3.Last book I read

Stephanie lent me Pastoralia by George Saunders nearly two years ago. I just got around to reading it.

I'm working on Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune. Sometimes she writes so beautifully, I just want to stop whatever scribbling I'm trying to do and become a plumber. But then she's probably a better plumber than I am, too.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me

This is a tough question, but here goes:

a. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell--I've read this novel nearly ten times. That is, ten times that I can remember. I stuck rose petals between the pages to mark my favorite moments. Every now and then I pull it off the shelf and just touch the cover, re-read scenes. And yet, I have guilt about loving this book so much. I once read an article by Alice Walker, who detailed the humiliation and anger she felt when one of her friends dressed as Scarlett O'Hara for a costume party. She felt betrayed. Alice Walker! If she finds out how much I love this book, I could have my Blackness membership card shredded.


b. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald--Beautiful prose. Perfect story. And did I mention beautiful prose?

c. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez--I always feel like reading this book again. It's magical. It's real. It's well-written.

d. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende--Damn her and her fabulous storytelling.

e. The Color Purple by Alice Walker--I re-read this book when I was working on my thesis. This meditation on women's transgression and friendship still gets to me. (To Ms. Walker--Please don't revoke my membership!)

5. If I were asked to donate three books to send to the moon for the aliens to find upon first contact, what would they be?

Carrie by Stephen King; Jared's Love Child by Sandra Field; and America: The Book by Jon Stewart et. al., when combined, provide an image of American life that would both disgust and intimidate hostile aliens. You can thank me later.

6. If I were captured by corrupt, South Asian authorities, which book would get me thrown into prison?

Desperate Characters by Paula Fox. There's nothing terribly provocative about this short novel. It's just the most boring and pointless riff on American middle-class life ever. And my captors would peruse the pages and understand that. If I've been toting that mess all over the planet, then I deserve punishment.

7. If I had one of those libraries like the Beast had in Disney's "Beauty & the Beast," which three books would always be on the table, ready for consumption?

Dracula by Bram Stoker; Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley; and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston--For some reason, flipping through these books makes me feel like I'm at home.

8. If I were stuck on a 20-hour flight with Paris Hilton, what two books would I take with me to prevent conversation--one for me, one for her?

Paris: Isn't first-class--
Sam: No.
Paris: Well, I--
Sam: No.
Paris: Hey, do you--
Sam: Take this copy of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
Paris: But I can't--
Sam: Experience emotional pain, bitch! And do it quietly. I'm trying to finish Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.

9. What book has won me the most friends?

I've picked up a couple of friends by mentioning Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. Sad thing is, I only remember it being an evocative novel. I'm afraid I don't recall too much beyond the title and the author's lovely, lovely name.

10. What three books do I want to be buried with, so that when I'm dug up like King Tut, the archaeologists will thoroughly understand 20th and 21st century society?

They'll find my gnarled, dusty, bone-fingers curled around copies of Ellison's Invisible Man; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And then everyone will realize how scary and fascinating and unfair and awful and wonderful it was to be alive in the Era of Her Highness Sam and her Mighty Cat People, who protected the moon from malevolent aliens with their magic books.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Hey! Leave Jane Austen Alone!

So, recently, in one of our rampant work-time IM sessions, Sam informed me that there was a new Pride and Prejudice movie coming out. This one starring Kiera Knightley. And some guy named Matthew MacFadyen in the role my beloved Colin Firth played so recently, in the prime of my formative teenage crush years (furthering Sam's theory that 1995 was the best of all years).

Now, in theory, I should be happy. I mean, Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors, perhaps the favorite. I've watched all the adaptations. Even the quintessentially BBC Northanger Abbey (1986) and the too-painful-for-words Francis O'Connor Mansfield Park (1999) which leached biographical details from Jane Austen's own life into the story to make Fanny Price a more palatable heroine. I've been to Jane Austen's house and I have Jane Austen collectibles. And actually, that's probably why.

I have nothing against Kiera Knightley. I enjoyed her in Pirates of the Caribbean. I didn't hate her in Love Actually, a movie so sappy it should come with diabetic warnings. I appreciated her not getting the guy in Bend It Like Beckham. Maybe it was amidst the 20 minutes of pointless violence in the King Arthur director's cut that she began to work a nerve. Regardless, the thought of her now portraying Elizabeth Bennet is repugnant to me. For one thing, she's far too skinny. (This is one of my least coherent arguments simply because Jane Austen never offers physical descriptions of her heroines.) Jennifer Ehle is at least a normal-sized person that I might believe lives on English food at a time when women wore dresses with no spandex parts. And Kiera Knightley is indeed so tiny that the snippets of her delivering Lizzie Bennet lines make her seem like a spoiled 10-year-old rather than a thinking woman caught in a marriage market. And that's a shame.

Also a shame? The fact that those snippets of dialogue have been altered. This is, I think, the bigger shame, however, because Austen's dialogue is just about as good as it gets. Sure, when you hear it, you might have to do a little deciphering, a little pretending you live in olden times, but the sense is there. Take this example: the 2005 movie preview shows Elizabeth and Darcy having the conversation they have at Rosings in front of Colonel Fitzwilliam (he being the buffer for them at this point in their relationship). In the trailer Darcy says "I do not have that talent for talking easily with people I have never met," and Elizabeth replies, "Perhaps you should practice." Compare this to the text:

"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,'' said Darcy, ``of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.''
"
My fingers,'' said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault -- because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.''

My argument for the original dialogue is a little bit like the argument for poetry. Sure, the movie version is quicker and retains most of the sense of the original, but something more delicate is lost. In Austen's version Elizabeth does not directly tell Darcy he should practice and that makes her conversational skills actually seem superior to his. It is, after all, not all that polite to suggest improvement in another person. Elizabeth implies but does not say that Darcy should better himself. Sure, having her come out and say what she's thinking gives her more 21st century American spunk, but it also diminishes her intelligence a bit. And after all, Elizabeth Bennet may find the society around her quite a bit ridiculous, but she hasn't ceased to function within its confines.

Which brings me to the preview's next bit of nonsense, namely the idea of Elizabeth Bennet as a "modern" woman rebelling against her time. I am the first person who would say Jane Austen was revolutionary, but she was all about subtlety and slipping things by the unwary reader. There are definitely no proclamations of revolution from Elizabeth Bennet. She traipses through the dirt and declines to marry Mr. Collins, but she ends up marrying an even richer man. And it's not like Mr. Bennet was rallying for her to marry Mr. Collins, either, circumstances which might have made Elizabeth's refusal a little more dramatic in terms of will-power.

The trailer also shows one of the pivotal scenes in the book, Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth and her refusal of him. In the book and in every other adaptation I've ever seen, this happens in the drawing room at Mr. Collins's cottage at Rosings. In the trailer, Kiera Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen seem to be carrying the scene out soaking wet in a gazebo or something. There also seem to be a lot more amorous glances thrown in during the insult section of the scene than I've ever seen before. That, to me, is a pretty good definition of gratuitous.

Of course, all of these things are the hallmarks of trying to market the film to a younger audience and my railing against them makes me seem like the cranky old lady of "you kids get off my lawn!" fame. I'm not against change. I am against diluted mediocrity. I wouldn't suggest that every Pride and Prejudice adaptation be 6 hours long and word for word. But if you do change it, take a stand. I love Clueless just as much as Sam. I enjoyed Bride and Prejudice and eagerly await its DVD release. Even though I shudder at its role in launching chick-lit, I really did like Bridget Jones's Diary, not the least because the character of Mark Darcy was based on Colin Firth's portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice.

What all of these movies have in common is that they chose a side. The 1995 Pride and Prejudice chose to be a period film that stuck close to the book (for other good examples look at Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility or Roger Michell's Persuasion - both also released in 1995). The other three took Austen's story and transformed it into a modern-day plot. That's what you do when you want to write your own dialogue or attract a different kind of audience. I think Austen will always be relevant and interesting, but it's not everyone's pleasure to watch costume dramas or period pieces. Putting Kiera Knightley in an Empire waist gown isn't going to change that. So, if you're going to make the movie, make the movie. Make it good and market it to people who might actually go see it, like me.

Monday, June 20, 2005

The Mrs.

We got on great.
Think of the spectacle of that.
Your love elsewhere,
sitting pretty, flashing.

Our reluctant heroine
has suffered delays,
hopped up on a titilating watercolor.
I think it's irrelevant.

Casting hiccups to paint
it out, the fake supermarket,
the actual figure -- just
here for the movies,
unafraid to lay herself bare--
immediately clicked
into weapons, as a human
serrated blade.

Filming the final scenes,
the tabloid world
has nothing further.
Some secret, some skeleton
scored in TV,
parasites in the blood,
a seductive fatalism.

Hollywood's bad girl
has never really mourned
just real things.
The explosive pictorial
side of celebrity
is a sucker's bet,
because I looked around.
The thrill of the mother,
a normal comedy,
hipster flick, map fetish,
a separate outfit to rub,
the steamier music.

Not just pawns,
dithering executives,
nesting instincts as daydream playthings,
tatooed on her left arm:
man-eater, Jessica Rabbit.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Batman vs. Batman (vs. Batman vs. Batman vs. Batman)

Too many Batmans! They should fight! Metaphorically!

1. Adam West (Batman 1966) vs. Michael Keaton (Batman 1989)

For comic book enthusiasts, the outcome of this battle seems obvious. Tim Burton's "Batman" brought darkness back into the franchise. Michael Keaton was a dark knight, and it wasn't funny when he declared, "I'm Batman." In fact, for a nine-year-old girl, it was almost scary.

But before Keaton, there was West. We can hardly call his Batman a dark knight. The studio lighting didn't leave too many shadows around the black knickers he donned over his light blue tights. His boots looked like slippers, and, seriously, there were eyebrows painted onto the bat-mask.

Both Adam West and Michael Keaton suffered career slumps after their stints as the Batman. West does the voice of the Mayor of Quahog on "Family Guy," and Michael Keaton is in "Herbie: Fully Loaded" like it's okay to be in "Herbie: Fully Loaded." Does Keaton's less cringe-worthy turn as Gotham City's hero make him the better Batman?

I say, "Yes," but Stephanie has reminded me that we couldn't end our conversations with "Same bat time, same bat channel" without West. She also pointed out: "...what is Batman but a guy who dresses up like a bat for no good reason? Adam West totally captured the hilarity of that." And Keaton only battled against one Catwoman. West took it to the next level with three.

Advantage: West

2. Michael Keaton vs. Val Kilmer (Batman 1995)

According to IMDb.com, Keaton walked away from the Batman franchise after reading the script for Schulmacher's "Batman Forever."

Good decision. Except we got Val Kilmer.

Sure, Kilmer's lips became famous. He wore the (eye-brow-free) bat-mask quite well, and I almost excused the fact that his Batman didn't have the neurotic charm of Keaton's. Almost.

Val Kilmer made Bruce Wayne seem like a regular guy, a vulnerable joe who gets shy at the sight of Nicole Kidman's breasts--er, charms. He wasn't nearly as crazy as Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face or Carrey's Riddler.

See, Kilmer didn't get the memo. Batman/Bruce Wayne is not your average playboy billionaire with a noble desire to change Gotham City. Batman is a lunatic with resources at his disposal. And he wouldn't wear those stupid glasses.

Advantage: Keaton

3. Val Kilmer vs. George Clooney (Batman 1997)

If it weren't for "O, Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Out of Sight" George Clooney would have to send $10 and an apology card to every person who suffered through "Batman & Robin," heretofore known as "the Batman movie that does not exist."

I suppose, then, the battle should look like this: Val Kilmer vs. Val Kilmer

There can be only winner in this new battle.

Advantage: Keaton

4. Adam West vs. Michael Keaton vs. Christian Bale (Batman 2005)

This could get ugly.

Christian Bale is the Batman of the 21st century. He's as pretty as Val Kilmer, and Nolan's "Batman Begins" acknowledges and expands upon the personal troubles of Bruce Wayne. In his performance as the Dark Knight, Bale is serious, sensitive, and scary. He has the potential to become what West and Keaton already are: Batman.

West and Keaton can no more escape their roles as Batman. West tried. Yes, Keaton also played Beetlejuice, but he played it a little too well. I have a hard time remembering him as the "ghost with the most." He is Batman, too; I've heard him say it a number of times on Prince's "The Future," and I believe him.

Bale has some interesting shoes to fill, and he's making a damned decent go of it in "Batman Begins." In the mean time, though...

Advantage: West and Keaton

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Thought in Food

This is the feeling: the middle of an eclair
when you come back to yourself and respect scissors
away. Maybe you think we vegetate
at just such a frequency of self-disgust, a platter
of mistaken steps. But that's hardly the most original coin
in circulation. We are convertible.
Only a second and those nascent
doubts disappear in our closing teeth, carriage to pumpkin
by force of will. This fabric
in the mind, deft switchbacks that corset
personality into action, these are what blaze,
what impel us forward. And so, a resurgence
of eating, the pastry dissolves on the tongue.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

I Love the '90s, But Not in a VHI Kind of Way

So yesterday I decided to rent "The Graduate" in remembrance of Anne Bancroft. While I stood at the counter, I noticed a shiny, special edition copy of "Matilda" on DVD. "You know what?" I exclaimed, startling the clerk. "I don't get it. I just don't get how they can have a special edition of this movie, when it's just about time for the 10th anniversary edition of 'Clueless.' I mean, it's--it's just time for it! Don't you think it's time?" He smiled and nodded, and I realized I should try prep strangers for these outbursts.

But it is time. "Clueless" premiered in July 1995; it grossed over $70 million worldwide. Based very loosely on Austen's Emma, the film featured no explosions or aliens or cigar-chomping badasses with axes to grind. At the center of the drama is a high school girl. Her and her friends' use of language not only propelled the plot but also shaped the language of the 14-year-old girls watching it. Admit it; "what-ever" took on new meaning after the premiere of "Clueless."

And I want my special DVD. I want interviews with Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash (who has not aged after a decade), and Brittany Murphy. I want commentary from director and writer Amy Heckerling and Breckin Meyer, who played the kid who made the tardy award acceptance speech. I want music videos from Jill Sobule, Supergrass, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I want Easter eggs.

I've never felt this way about a movie before. I welcomed the very, very special edition of "Gone with the Wind," and I'm still reveling in the wealth of features on those four lovely discs. I take it for granted that an epic film sparkling with legendary stars from the golden age of Hollywood will receive that kind of DVD treatment. "Clueless" is not an epic. In fact, it inspired a deluge of awful teen movies and, most unfortunate of all, the television series "Clueless." Nonetheless, the movie is emblematic of an interesting moment in American pop culture. I think 1995 was a good time to be a girl.

I was almost 14 years old when "Clueless" hit theaters. I spent that summer cultivating a stringent feminist sensibility; I liked to "boycott." I refused to watch music videos with scantily clad female dancers. I blasted "Pocahontas" for sexualizing its Native American heroine, and I made it a point to slam my bedroom door whenever my sister put that movie on. I owned an Alanis Morissette CD, and I liked listening to Joan Osborne, Monica, Brandy, Sheryl Crow, and TLC. For every music video I "boycotted," there were at least two more featuring talented, provocative female artists.

I could argue the short-skirted leads in "Clueless" adhered to the unrealistic standards of beauty that drive some girls to depreciate their bodies. But I won't. The movie is both representative of and critical of popular culture. (Cher's argument for going to gym class, for example, includes a trite and exhaustive list of the junk food she's consumed. After three M&Ms, she claims to feel like a "heifer.") "Clueless" pokes fun at a shallow world that values material wealth. And it's awfully clever about it. It didn't hurt Amy Heckerling to take cues from Jane Austen, the master of witty social commentary.

So where's my special edition DVD? Ten years after "Clueless" there still aren't as many female directors calling shots in Hollywood, and I'm "boycotting" more than ever. Gross-out teen movies with boy-buddies on inane road trips get on my nerves, and yet. And, yes, "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" showcases the talents of four young actresses, one of whom is not shaped like a popsicle stick, but it does not contain anything as sharp as Alicia Silverstone's impatient monologue about boys and fashion. So, if no one wants to make another "Clueless," then at least she can treat all of us--especially me--to a DVD loaded with three days' worth of goodies.

Don't make me beg. Or frighten more video rental store clerks.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

TV - On Why It Is Good For You

Okay, when I lured Sam over to the dark side to start this blog, I promised her that it wouldn't be confined to entirely literary pursuits and that our shared enjoyment of things pop culture would be represented. So, for this entry she asked me to "snap on Lost," as I have a tendency to do in our frequent conversations. However, I am going to defy her instructions simply because the Lost finale was more than a week ago and my ire is getting a little stale. Still, I thought it might be worthwhile to talk a bit about television and why we are so enamored of it.

Genres of storytelling evolve all the time based on media, and television is a fascinating example. Like a film, and capable of showing films, but also capable of much more than that. It's always on. Whether or not you choose to watch it and whether or not you like what's being shown, it is always there. But we break it up into time slots and further into sections around commercial breaks. The whole business side of television, how it arrives to the consumer as free programming restricts the form of television shows to fascinating effects. The half-hour comedy and the hour-long drama function, as any media studies professor will tell you, not as the product of television, but as the enticement so that the consumer will sit through commercials. But in turn, these enticements have to seem to the merchants who buy commercials, like they will draw in enough viewers to justify buying the commercial. Therefore the forms that have worked in the past are the forms that will be produced in the future. Unlike poetry or fiction or even movies, the form is finite and almost completely commercially controlled. I mean, you can raise money on your own to make a serial television show, but someone has to agree to put it on TV.

Try to think what you would do with something like that. You have 22 episodes of a drama which will not be put on TV. It is not a movie. It doesn't look like a movie and it is far too long to show in one sitting. There are strange emphasized breaks where commercials would go--moments of suspense meant to keep people from flipping during those commercials which are quickly resolved in the next cut. Therefore, it's a form with plenty of limitations. Corporate approval, federal decency regulations, limited time, and precarious longevity.

And yet, I can't help but see these as formal restrictions that, while at times engendering sameness and mediocrity, can force truly creative people to innovate and produce great things. As in Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art," sometimes the restrictions of the form make the maneuvering within that form all the more incredible, entertaining or heart-breaking. The episode to episode or season to season cliff-hanger comes to mind as a genre-specific device. Although serial television most closely resembles a novel in its narrative structure (as opposed to movies, which would be more like short stories), you can't just flip to the back page to find out the ending. The narrative is protected by the structures of the medium--the fact that the network wants you to need to tune in again, next week. This season, it seems like all my favorite shows ended with cliff-hangers: Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, Alias, Lost, Desperate Housewives. It's something that keeps the narrative alive and bubbling in your head over a long period of time.

And not just your head, but the heads of all your friends as well. That's the other great thing about TV. It's a shared experience. It's a mass medium. Walking down the street in New York, I can hear people debating the same plot points that Sam and I debated the night before. It's a weird and wonderful feeling. I'll leave it to Sam to add any of her own comments on the subject, but for me, TV is a modern phenomenon I often feel lucky to be able to participate in. I mean, whenever American Idol's not on.